News

I confess: I love Christmas music. You too? That doesn’t make us morons, does it? No, Virginia! Just as we can embrace the holidays with all-due cheer but without chirping “Have a merry merry!” to everyone, or forcing the cats to wear little Santa hats, so too can we love Christmas music while still hating the indiscriminate use of sleigh bells as percussion instruments; the pairing of great vocalists with children’s choirs; and the performance by anyone, even Frank Sinatra—especially Frank Sinatra—of “Frosty the Snowman.”

Like everyone who lives in a blue state, I lose another little piece of my soul every year on the morning of November 1 when I hear “Jingle Bell Rock” while waiting in line at Starbucks. And yet—a Christmas miracle!—I never fail to be amused by Eartha Kitt’s mercenary, dryly sexy “Santa Baby” or to respond to the gust of warm melancholy that is Vince Guaraldi’s “What Child Is This.”

Warm melancholy: that’s kind of the holidays in a nutshell, right? Pleasure and disappointment in equal measure? Darkness and light, literally and figuratively? The Sisyphean waking dream of the mythical, never-arriving white Christmas? You say neurotic, I say bittersweet! Either way, it’s those tensions that inflect the best Christmas music. Love-hate: how better to describe our relationship, or at least mine, to Andy Williams singing “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”?

To my taste, Christmas songs are particularly well suited to jazz, soul, folk, and Sinatra-style pop interpretations because: 1) those are musical genres that really know from warm melancholy; and 2) that’s the kind of music I like anyway. Rock and contemporary pop I also like, but they’re better at anger and come-ons; they’re more for raucous Fourth of July or Halloween parties than for feeling sorry for yourself while sipping your third eggnog. (Well, O.K., soul music is pretty good at come-ons, too. Check out “Back Door Santa,” by Clarence Carter.)

Christmas music is especially well served by jazz interpretations because, in a world of niche tastes, the 20-odd Christmas songs that everyone records over and over are the last old-school standards we have, drilled annually into every American’s skull regardless of race, creed, or religion. (It’s fun the first week of December to ask baristas or department-store salespeople if they’re sick of the Christmas music yet and watch their faces spasm.) A 15-year-old won’t know “April in Paris,” “Summertime,” or “Caravan,” and a 35-year-old probably won’t, either, and likely not even your average 55-year-old—but everyone knows “Winter Wonderland,” “The Christmas Song,” and “Frosty That Unbearable Fucking Snowman.” These are songs begging to be taken apart or given new shadings simply so that we can stand to listen to them again. And again.

Here, in no particular order, are a few of my favorite Christmas song performances, taken off some of my favorite Christmas albums. I’m skipping the classic versions that everybody loves, like Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” and the obvious albums, like Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas and* A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector*. I’m also leaving Handel and Tchaikovsky out of it. Country music too.

In the spirit of the season, however, I did give a listen to Justin Bieber’s new Under the Mistletoe (oooo—blush!) and thought it wasn’t bad until I got to his rap break in the middle of “The Little Drummer Boy,” which includes the couplet: “I’m so tight, I might go psycho/Christmas time, so here’s a recital.” Nice internal rhyme, if that’s what’s going on with “psycho” and “recital,” but . . . nah. (To hear each song I mention, click the link for a video or iTunes preview.)

“Zat You Santa Claus?” by Louis Armstrong, from the compilation What a Wonderful Christmas. I love the unfazed corniness of this combined with the giddy swing-band swoop and oomph—it sounds like Armstrong and company are having a gas. (They probably were; Armstrong was a big pothead.) The album includes five other songs by Armstrong, including the estimable “Cool Yule” and “Christmas in Harlem,” and still more from the likes of Mel Torme, Peggy Lee, Dinah Washington, and Duke Ellington.

“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” by Jimmy Smith, from the album Christmas’64. Smith was Blue Note’s and Verve’s king of the Hammond organ in the late 50s and 60s. This starts out like a high-school concert band arrangement, with pounding tympani and regimented brass; then, after a verse and a wink, it turns over its engine and motors into a lounge-y groove, solemnity dissipated, blue smoke wafting in. When this record was first reissued, it was given the much better title Christmas Cookin’—and one of the greatest album covers ever (see above).

“Jingle Bells,” by Ella Fitzgerald, from the album Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas. Only Fitzgerald could make “Jingle Bells,” the “Chopsticks” of Christmas songs, listenable. And not only that: she makes it swing. (I bet someone dared her.) This is an impeccable jazz vocal record; Fitzgerald’s songbook albums and other great records needn’t be embarrassed to be shelved next to it.

__“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” Johnny Mercer & the Pied Pipers, from the compilation Christmas Kisses.__Not only was Mercer one of the all-time great song lyricists (“Blues in the Night,” “One for My Baby,” “Moon River”), he was also a co-founder of Capitol Records and himself a charming, nimble vocalist. This compilation, drawn from the label’s early days, is loaded down like a fruitcake with too many awful novelty songs (e.g., “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas,” by Yogi Yorgesson) but this track is terrific, Mercer dancing over the dopey lyrics (he would have known) with his usual huckleberry savoir faire and, here and there, a jive-talk rewrite.

“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” by the Temptations, from the compilation A Motown Christmas. Another kids’ song given a terrific arrangement and performance. When the Temps get to “Hey Rudolph, won’t you drive my sleigh,” they almost succeed in making a Gene Autry ditty sound sexy.

“I Saw Three Ships,” by Sufjan Stevens, from the EP Songs of Christmas, Vol. 2: Hark! I thought I should include at least one contemporary artist, and one number that actually embodies that “warm melancholy” shit I was fancy-writing about. Stevens brings a literally plucky (banjo) wistfulness to this carol. This is available in a box set containing all five of Stevens’s Christmas EPs, which include many more traditional carols plus originals such as “Hey Guys! It’s Christmas Time!” and “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!” and “Come on! Let’s Boogey to the Elf Dance!” Lower-keyed than his non-holiday work, despite all those exclamation points, and all the more seductive for it.

Purple Snowflakes,”__
__ by Marvin Gaye.__I have no idea what the provenance of this is, or whether it’s really even a Christmas song. But just listen!

And here are a few more great Christmas albums and songs (still in no particular order):

Christmas Songs, by Mel Torme. He wrote “The Christmas Song,” but Nat King Cole had the hit with it. One highlight here is Torme’s hepcat take on “King Wenceslas.”

Crescent City Christmas Card, by Wynton Marsalis. Opens with a killer “Carol of the Bells” that grabs hold of the carol’s famously insistent motif to the point of flirting with dementia.

“We Free Kings,” by Roland Kirk. His take on “We Three Kings.” Kirk could play three saxophones at once. This starts out sounding like cars honking in weird, beautiful harmony, which could also serve as another metaphor for holiday yin-yang.

__A Child Is Born, by Gerri Allen.__A sophisticated, exquisitely lovely new album by the jazz pianist, mostly played solo. Heartfelt and moving but also, at times, demanding—like mom!

Here Juli Weiner and I debate the virtues of Zooey Deschanel’s recording of “The Christmas Waltz.” And here are a couple of wonderfully O.C.D. Christmas music sites I recently stumbled on that between them must list anything you’d want to listen to or avoid between now and December 25 . . .